Secret Daughter: A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away

by June Cross Narrated by LaQuita James

Overview

June Cross was born in 1954 to Norma Booth, a glamorous, aspiring white actress, and James "Stump" Cross, a well-known black comedian. Sent by her mother to be raised by black friends when she was four years old and could no longer pass as white, June was plunged into the pain and confusion of a family divided by race. Secret Daughter tells her story of survival. It traces June's astonishing discoveries about her mother and about her own fierce determination to thrive. This is an inspiring testimony to the endurance of love between mother and daughter, a child and her adoptive parents, and the power of community.

Editorial Reviews

June Cross grew up with two identities. During the school year, she was the adopted daughter of an Atlantic City African-American couple. On summer vacations, she joined her white biological mother in Los Angeles, becoming a seasonal member of a prominent show business family. When questioned, her natural mother would identify her illegitimate, biracial daughter as a niece or adopted. Cross's knotty past became the prelude for an equally unconventional adolescence and adulthood, all of which is captured in this soul-searching memoir. More powerful than any seminar on race.

Newsweek

A painful, richly detailed account ... [that reveals] astonishing truths.

Elle

Searing, revelatory ... mind-boggling in its rich and complex interplay of personalities [and] social and racial pressures.

People

Deeply moving, Secret Daughter chronicles a complex life buffeted by lies and only partly buffered by love.

Chicago Tribune

A powerful testament to this country's obsession with race and the foolishness this preoccupation creates.

Publishers Weekly

Using her 1997 Emmy Award- winning documentary, Secret Daughter, as inspiration for her memoir of the same name, Cross, a TV producer and journalism professor at Columbia University, narrates her life as the daughter of a white woman and a well-known black vaudevillian (Jimmy Cross) who was handed over to a black couple for rearing. Several elements fight for the center of this memoir: the emotional roller coaster of life spent between her bourgeois adoptive black family in Atlantic City and her Hollywood show business biological mother (who usually introduced her daughter as a niece or having been adopted); her undergraduate difficulties at the Harvard Crimson, "a club of smart-assed white boys and prefeminist women, more butch than liberated"; and life in the '60s ("It was the season of Angela Davis's trial, so prisons were hip"). She also weaves in gossipy show business tales that follow the career trajectory of F Troop actor Larry Storch as well as some settling of scores (Jerry Lewis borrowed from her father's act "Stump and Stumpy" but didn't send flowers to his funeral). Unfortunately, the bits and pieces fail to cohere, and her narrative often falls flat ("I rose from the piano stool and crossed the room") in what is otherwise an intriguing story. (May 22) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In this memoir, which grew out of a 1996 Emmy award-winning documentary, Cross (journalism, Columbia Univ.) reveals her experiences as a mixed-race child born in mid-20th-century America. Dedicated to pursuing an acting career, her mother left Cross to be cared for by a black family friend. Cross recounts her childhood and relays her impressions of both the black and the white world during the chaotic period of the Civil Rights Movement. She describes in intimate detail fine racial boundaries at times nearly invisible to outsiders and provides unique insight into the societal repercussions of crossing these racial boundaries and "passing" as a member of another race. Amazingly, she avoids bitterness, instead describing a journey toward forgiveness and self-acceptance, as well as her discovery of a biracial older sister who had been put up for adoption by their parents. Cross has crafted a touching memoir that exposes the angst of a young girl struggling for acceptance across two worlds. Recommended for undergraduate and public libraries.-Kristin Whitehair, Kansas State Univ. Libs., Manhattan Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Powerful debut memoir relates what happened after the author's white mother and black father split up. Cross (Journalism/Columbia Univ.) knew a lot about race from a very young age. People frowned at little June's hair, said she looked Chinese, said she had her daddy's lips. Her parents separated in January 1954, when she was a baby. Identified as "white" on her birth certificate, she lived with her mother, Norma, in New York for a few years, but then her skin got darker, and she could no longer "pass." Before June was old enough to enter school, Norma sent her to live in Atlantic City with a middle-class black couple, Aunt Peggy and Uncle Paul. Eventually, her mother married actor Larry Storch. June visited them in the summertime, but Norma always worried that her presence threatened Storch's career. Meanwhile, Peggy loved her like a daughter, but they clashed as the '60s unfolded; the older woman had little patience for African-American radicalism and worried that June was limiting herself at Harvard by hanging out with other black students. The memoir follows Cross through college and beyond, into a successful career in journalism that included making an Emmy-winning documentary, also called Secret Daughter, about her childhood and her relationship with Norma. Here, she concludes that her mother "had done the right thing," though she also knows that her childhood lefts its marks: "Trust eludes me. . . . I waited until middle age to marry. I never had children." The kiddie voice employed in early chapters ("Paul's God had a mommie called Virgin Mary") is replaced by the middle of the book with a strong, even tone. A searing, personal account of race and racism in mid-century America.

From the Publisher

A painful, richly detailed account . . . [that reveals] astonishing truths. (Newsweek)

Searing, revelatory à mind-boggling in its rich and complex interplay of personalities [and] social and racial pressures. (Elle)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176395556
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	06/08/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Secret Daughter"
by .
Copyright © 2007 June Cross.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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